


Sobriquet

by evanlinge



Series: Saviour 'verse [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Darker Minato, Gen, Saviour 'verse, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 05:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanlinge/pseuds/evanlinge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Namikaze Minato is born nameless, and dies the same. Orochimaru observes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sobriquet

 

 

Namikaze Minato is born nameless, the bastard child of an unknown shinobi and a half-mad mother from the bay on the other side of the Uzu-sea.

 

If truth be told, Minato never knew his mother's last name. _Namikaze,_ a word that came to mind when he watched the sealed ruins of Uzushiogakure fade into the distance as he made his way to Konoha. It is the name he carves into history with a tri-pronged kunai when he cuts a bloody swath through the Elemental Countries during the Third Great Shinobi War.

 

He had been accepted into the academy, overseers and teachers watching closely as he progressed at an unnerving rate through the ranks. He had been given his second title then. _Genius_.

 

Minato asks Jiraiya-sensei teach him the art of Seals when he gains his apprenticeship, and dodges any questions about why he is interested. The memory of a ruined village across the ocean remains stark in his memory.

 

He never forgot his mother's ravings, of how the Uzu-nin were nearly gods, with their seals and brushes, and bloodied ink. Uzumaki Kushina, with her too-red hair and vivacious chakra is proof of it.

 

He takes to the art with watchful eyes and quick, graceful fingers, and soon it seems as if everyone else is moving in slow-motion; He smirks at Orochimaru's widened eyes and thinned lips when he vanishes in a flash of bright gold.  
  
"You cannot cheat time forever, Minato-kun," Orochimaru says, but there is recognition and something that might once have been admiration in his tone. Minato is not yet fourteen.

 

* * *

 

Jiraiya-sensei is proud, even though he clearly believes Minato is drunk on his own brilliance, and Minato only tells him once, when Sensei is too inebriated to remember, that his large, calloused hand on Minato's shoulder is the only thing that keeps him grounded when he receives his third moniker. _The Yellow Flash._

 

He knows well enough that it is synonymous with _demon_ , in Iwagakure.

 

And perhaps, he thinks, when he lets his student fall into his tomb of boulders and rockfall, that Iwa are the ones who have it right. Orochimaru is correct when he implies that Minato is utterly insane behind his façade of humility and indirect pacifism.

 

They call him _saviour_ in Konoha.

 

* * *

 

Minato is unsurprised when Kakashi stands beside him at Obito's corpse-less funeral, headband slanted over his gifted, cursed, eye, but can't help but be disappointed, disgust rising in his throat as he reminds himself, father like son. Kakashi is a failure, and his final surviving student will wallow in his regret to the point of self-destruction. He is still Minato's responsibility, just as Rin was until her untimely death.

 

He is eighteen when he marries Kushina, and loves her as much as he is able, as much as he can allow. Sometimes he believes that she keeps his from his own madness. In the privacy of his own mind, he knows that this is mostly wishful thinking.

 

A year later his inauguration as Yondaime Hokage takes place. He smiles easily at the crowd, hair glinting gold under the wide-brimmed ceremonial hat – a memento to his slaughter of the Iwa-nins. They shout his titles, and not his name, calling him a hero of the battlefield.

 

It's incorrect, he knows, what he did on the front lines was not a battle, because that implies that two opposing sides fought and both possessed a chance at victory. It wasn't a battle. It was an extermination.

 

* * *

 

Minato easily recalls the way the Snake Sannin scowled, dark hair shifting as he strode away under the Sandaime's cool gaze. It's just as well, he supposes. Orochimaru was the only one who knew the young Yondaime didn't believe a word of his own acceptance speech.

 

"The will of fire." He finds it only fleetingly ironic that the Village of the Leaves would choose that particular turn of phrase.

 

* * *

 

"Konoha chose a monster for a kage," The Iwa jounin hisses, and Minato swallows a breath of laughter as the woman's body hits the ground.

 

"Doesn't every village?"

 

* * *

 

When the Kyuubi appears, he feels detached, like he's been emptied out and frozen shut. He'd anticipated Obito's survival, _maybe he'll live maybe he won't_ , but seeing him now, he only feels revulsion. The Uchiha, for all their physical power and deceiving eyes, are weak – easily manipulated and easily broken.

 

He takes his former student's right arm and a portion of his chest as payment for his foolishness, _maybe he'll live maybe he won't_ , and watches the _Sharingan_ in the Kyuubi's eyes.

 

That night he summons a god to the mortal realm and becomes its conduit – the Kyuubi snarls at him, that immortal creature who has seen the dawn of the Shinobi Nations, and who will see the end, wary of some fragile human.

 

* * *

 

Namikaze Minato dies that day, corpse preserved and cold with the Shinigami's seal.

 

Some think he miscalculated that night on October tenth, but as he awakens, body weak and tender as a child's, his blue eyes are sharp. The desert sands brush against his naked calves and he laughs and laughs, hollowed out and filled back up.

 

* * *

 

 

 _**Sobriquet:** _ _an alias, an assumed name. Minato has more than he can recall._

 

 


End file.
